Washington - The United States is investigating the procurement of US-made supercomputers by two Russian nuclear weapons labs in defiance of an American export ban, the State Department said yesterday.
"There's no question that the Russians have computers, and we believe they are computers that they specifically requested a licence for that we turned down. And we believe they are at locations precisely where we did not want them to be," the State Department spokesman, Mr James Rubin, told reporters.
Mr Rubin's comment followed published reports that a federal grand jury in Washington was investigating IBM's role in Russia's acquisition of the computers to determine if the company or its representatives violated US export laws. He said the Commerce Department and the US Customs Service were looking into the matter.